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Sunday, 12 January 2014

Knitting Madness: Hats, Boots and Headbands

This past week I've been inspired to get back into a bit of knitting. I haven't done any the past couple of months mainly because it's been too hot for wearing wool, and we've had nice weather so I'd rather be outdoors!

It started because I wanted a gift to give a friend who is pregnant & was feeding our cat for a few days while we were away. I've got a pattern booklet from the Australian Women's Weekly (Great Winter Knits circa 2012- I bought at our local hospice shop) and a lot of the colour ways are grey with a bright contrasting colour. As I have a whole bunch of grey wool scraps, I thought I could do "something" and just get a couple new colours of wool. At Spotlight they didn't have a light, buttery yellow that I was imagining, so I settled for bright Orange and Turquoise blue.

The pattern I always use for my hats is from Ravelry and available for free here. I just adapt it to whatever colour or size I want. Most of my wool is DK 8ply so I use 4.0mm or 4.5mm straight needles.

Here's the first hat:

I'm not hugely impressed with it because the vision I had in my head is not really what I was going for! I was thinking the blue "dots" would be more star-like, but it was a bit of an experiment as to whether I could add single stitches in a new colour.

I thought it would be nice to have some matching booties so I made these:

This is my favourite bootie pattern now (I've only tried one other one!) The main reason being that they are a really good style that will stay one. I'm not sure what the exact size is but I think it's newborn. You can buy the pattern from Ravelry, here is the link, it costs $3.99USD. Remember those cute pink ones I made last year?

I also made another newborn hat in the turquoise colour, using a different pattern because I wanted to try something textured. I found this pattern which has 3 different designs, also on straight needles. The design I made is called "King Charles Brocade". It sounds really fancy but it was very simple, just need to do a lot of counting!

The colour hasn't come out very well as it's quite a bright greeny blue colour. These are photo's taken from my phone at night time, so not really that accurate! I think you can get a good idea of the design though.

So here is the little set all finished:

The baby's gender is going to be a surprise, so these colour's work well for either.

After a bit of Ravelry-ing (a word I just made up, it means browsing patterns on Ravelry!) I came across a pattern for a sweet little bow headband for babies! I have heaps of scraps of yarn I want to use up, so these are perfect. The pattern I used is here. I adapted it a bit by making the width 6 as I thought it would be better wider. I did a few different colours although I'm not sure about the stripy one! I think the orange was a bit much!

My favourite is the grey & pink with the flower. The pattern for the flower is here. You work the amount of petals you want individually onto one needle (I used 5), and then knit them all together and join. Then as a pretty extra sew some beads in the middle. It was a pretty fiddly job, but the finished flower looks great.

A shame I only have a son, so no one to wear these headbands!

Oh and then because I LOVE making hats so much I made this little guy:

It looks really small to me for some reason? You can find the pattern here, which is for Newborn size and 3-6 month size (which I made). There is also a pattern for some adorable mittens to match.

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Hello and Welcome! I'm Marie, and I'm writing about things that I've been making, baking and creating. I'm a Kiwi girl living in Wellington, New Zealand. I hope my little space inspires you to start making...things!